App makes your phone a millionth of a medical supercomputer

Along with unveiling its new mid-tier flagship, the Desire 816, HTC has a unique offering at this year's Mobile
World Congress -- one that, unusually, is an actual phone. The
Power to Give app harnesses the processing power of your phone
while you're asleep and feeds it to a supercomputer group that
passes it on to a charity.

The "group" is a research project. Around the world
supercomputers are used to crunch enormous amounts of data created
by satellites searching the skies for signs of life, or to simulate
biological anomalies in the hope that it turns up evidence that can
be used to fight causes such as Alzheimer's, AIDS and cancer.

As a user, you can choose the supercomputing group you want to
lend your power to and can even pinpoint specific charities or
causes you want to benefit from your donation. The idea is that if
millions of people opt to take part, there will be a global grid of
users contributing their spare, unused processing power to
charity.

It doesn't require much time or effort on your part to help with
this mission, all you have to do is leave your phone charging
overnight and as long as it's at 90 percent battery and is
connected to Wi-Fi, the app will automatically take over the
device's processing power.

HTC has developed the technology in partnership with Berkeley
University and as an act of goodwill -- this is, after all, a
charity project -- is not making the app exclusive to HTC
devices.

The beta version of Power to Give will be going live on Google
Play this evening. Initially it will only be available for HTC
phones and other select Android devices, but will eventually roll
out more widely.